To elaborate on Papal Teaching is our mission on Plinthos (Gk. "brick"); and to do so anonymously, so that, like any brick in the wall, we might do our little part in the strength of the structure of humanity almost unnoticed.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

"I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life. The purely individual need for a fulfilment that is denied to us in this life, for an everlasting love that we await, is certainly an important motive for believing that man was made for eternity; but only in connection with the impossibility that the injustice of history should be the final word does the necessity for Christ's return and for new life become fully convincing." Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 43.

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment. Hebrews 9:27

You have said, “It is useless to serve God; what do we gain by observing God’s requirements, And by going about as mourners before the Lord of hosts? But we call the arrogant blessed; for evildoers not only prosper but even test God and escape.” Then those who fear the Lord spoke with one another, and the Lord listened attentively; A record book was written before him of those who fear the Lord and esteem his name. They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my own special possession, on the day when I take action. And I will have compassion on them, as a man has compassion on his son who serves him. Then you will again distinguish between the just and the wicked, Between the person who serves God, and the one who does not. For the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble, And the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the Lord of hosts. But for you who fear my name, the sun of justice will arise with healing in its wings; And you will go out leaping like calves from the stall and tread down the wicked; They will become dust under the soles of your feet, on the day when I take action, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 3:14-21

Having said that, I think the courts of the earth (e.g. USA) should nevertheless bring justice to the people of Cuba by bringing the Castro regime to trial for it's history of crimes, and justice should be served. Raul Castro should not be running Cuba. He should be tried for his own crimes and those of his brother in which he has been complicit.

Friday, November 18, 2016

The 1974 memorandum of CFR's Henry Kissinger was to clearly identify the
interests of the United States, as a government and a nation, with controlling
and reducing the populations of Developing Nations by means of contraception and abortion.

The Kissinger Report: The Depopulation
Agenda of America’s Elite 1974 to 1993

By Peter Chojnowski, Ph.D.

On December 10, 1974, Henry Kissinger (born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in Bavaria, Germany in 1923), National Security Advisor and Secretary of State to President Gerald Ford, issued National Security Study Memorandum 200 (NSSM 200), which was gradually declassified and finally released to the public in 1989.

The secrecy of the document at the time required that the document’s declassification and release could only be sanctioned by the White House itself. Following upon the Supreme Court ruling of January 22, 1973, Roe v. Wade striking down every state law restricting procured abortions within the United States, this National Security Directive explicitly identified the long term prosperity of the United States, along with the long term interests of the United States government, with a policy of radical reductions of populations and population growth with a multiplicity of nations in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

The intent of this memorandum was to clearly identify the interests of the United States, as a government and as a nation, with controlling and reducing the populations of the Developing Nations by means of contraception and abortion.

Kissinger’s Projected Demographic Apocalypse

In the Executive Summary of NSSM 200 for President Ford, world population growth after 1950 is portrayed as “quantitatively and qualitatively different from any previous epoch in human history.”1 The statistics given to justify this assertion were that, “The rapid reduction in death rates, unmatched by corresponding birth rate reductions, has brought total growth rates close to 2% a year, compared with about 1% before World War II, under 0.5% in 1750-1900 and even far lower rates before 1750. The effect is to double the world’s population in 35 years instead of 100 years. Almost 80 million people are being added each year, compared with 10 million in 1900.”2 Within 3 pages of the title of this Memorandum, Kissinger makes clear that it is “a two child family,” both within and without America, that will be the goal of United States government policy. Even if, he states, “a two-child family should become the norm in the future,” “policies to reduce fertility will have their main effects on total numbers only after several decades.”3 The ultimate intent for United States “interests” is, also, made clear on the same page of the Memorandum, when it is emphasized that for the reduced native populations of the targeted countries there will be, “lowered demands on food, health, and educational and other services,” hence resources –no longer wasted on feeding, educating, and healing their own people –can be allocated to enlarging “capacity to contribute to productive investments [presumably foreign investments], thus accelerating development.”4

The apocalyptic tone of NSSM 200, which was used to justify the massive allocation of resources and monies designated for the population control program speaks of the world situation in “the short and middle term” as involving “the possibility of massive famines in certain parts of the world, especially the poorest [read “overpopulated”] regions.”5

The “population explosion” also threatens longer-term food production through “cultivation of marginal lands, overgrazing, desertification, deforestation, and soil erosion, with consequent destruction of land and pollution of water, rapid siltation of reservoirs, and impairment of inland and coastal fisheries.”6 Even though speaking about “massive famines” for the countries of the Third World, Kissinger does all he can to indicate that attempts to increase the food supply in these countries will not ameliorate the problems on account of the negative consequences of more intensive agricultural development.

The Kissinger Reports discourages any solution to the “problem” of “overpopulation” that involved increased food production by stating, “Capital and foreign exchange requirements for intensive agriculture are heavy, and are aggravated by energy cost increases and fertilizer scarcities and price rises. The institutional, technical, and economic problems of transforming traditional agriculture are also very difficult to overcome.”7

Infertility and Sterility as the Only Acceptable Program: Confidential

Under a page heading marked “Confidential,” The Kissinger Report, which has identified that the major problem for the United States government and the world at large is that there were too many people being born into the world, then sets out to identify the causes of the “high birth rates” in many parts of the world. Of course, in light of the secularist utilitarian oligarchic attitude of the writer of the memorandum, the main “problem” to be overcome in the fight against too many of a certain type of people in the world is ignorance. In fact, the first cause of escalating populations is identified as “inadequate information about and availability of means of fertility control.”8

Added to this, the motivation to have as many children as possible is engendered by high child and infant mortality rates, along with the belief that it will be one’s own children who will take care of their parents during the parents’ old age.9

Sprinkled with “humanitarian” pledges to “improve health care and nutrition [for those who are allowed to be born],” “education and improved social status for women,” and “improved old age security” [as if a check in the mail will replace being surrounded by a large and loving family in one’s old age], the critical solution to the “problem” of fertility requires efforts to increase “demand” by birth control information and efforts to render large families less desirable, along with the necessity to then provide for this increase demand by an adequate “supply,” that is to “assure full availability by 1980 of birth control [means] to all fertile individuals.”10 The countries most specifically designated as needing population control “aid,” were: Mexico, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, the Philippines, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Ethiopia, and Columbia.

For these nations, The Kissinger Report draws the following conclusion, “While specific goals in this area are difficult to state, our aim should be for the world to achieve a replacement level of fertility, (a two child family on average), by about the year 2000…. this goal would result in 500 million fewer people in 2000 and about 3 billion fewer in 2050.” The crassly materialistic and self-aggrandizing aspect of this Memorandum is shown when Kissinger explains how rapid population growth in Third World nations, especially in African nations, will interfere with Western procurement of mineral resources.

According to the executive summary, “Rapid population growth is not in itself a major factor in pressure on depletable resources (fossil fuels and other minerals), since demand for them depends more on levels of industrial output than on numbers of people. On the other hand, the world is increasingly dependent on mineral supplies from developing countries, and if rapid population frustrates their prospects of economic development and social progress, the resulting instability may undermine the conditions for expanded output and sustained flows of such resources.11 Kissinger concludes his executive summary to fellow Republican, President Gerald Ford, by stating, “Attainment of this goal will require greatly intensified population programs.”12

NSSM 200 became official governmental policy on November 26, 1975 when National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft signed, in the name of President Gerald Ford, National Security Decision Memorandum 314, which states, “The President has reviewed the interagency response to NSSM 200 and the covering memorandum from the Chairman of the NSC Under Secretaries Committee. He believes that United States leadership is essential to combat population growth, to implement the World Population Plan of Action and to advance United States security and overseas interests. The President endorses the policy recommendations contained in the Executive Summary of the NSSM 200.”13

Kissinger Report as Rockefeller CFR Agenda: The Eugenics Masters

If we look objectively at the Nixon and Ford administrations during which the United States both legalized abortion and committed itself to a world-wide contraceptive and abortion program, we cannot help but see then as a Nelson Rockefeller Administration, without Nelson Rockefeller. This “without Nelson Rockefeller” is, of course, qualified by the fact that Rockefeller emerged as Vice President of the United States as a result of the resignation of Richard Nixon and the activation of the 25th Amendment. The major figures of the Nixon administration from 1969 to 1974, were those who were in some way protégés or professional assistants of Nelson Rockefeller and his family. Richard Nixon, “opponent” of Nelson Rockefeller in 2 of his 3 runs for the presidency during the 1960s, had been Rockefeller’s tenant and neighbor when the two both resided at 810 Fifth Avenue from the years 1966-1968 when Nixon worked in the firm of John Mitchell, Rockefeller’s personal attorney.14 This was the same building in which occurred the famous, “Munich of the Republican Party” –so called by Senator Barry Goldwater –in which Richard Nixon, during the summer of 1960 met with Nelson Rockefeller to refashion the conservative Republican electoral platform of the Taft faction,15 instead, producing a document that Edith Kermit Roosevelt called, “a carbon copy of the Democratic platform drawn up by Chester Bowles, Council of Foreign Relation member and former trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation.”16It was, perhaps, at this same meeting that Nelson Rockefeller was offered the vice presidential nomination by the Republican presidential nominee.17

It should not then be surprising that when Nixon made his chief choices for his administration, Spiro Agnew as his Vice President and Henry Kissinger as his National Security Advisor and, later, Secretary of State, the former should have been Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign chairman during his 1968 run for the presidency and the later should be Rockefeller’s foreign affairs advisor when Nelson was governor of New York. Kissinger’s relationship to Rockefeller was the main reason why Kissinger became one of the leading minds on the Council on Foreign Relations. According to J. Robert Moskin, “It was principally because of his long association with the Rockefellers that Henry Kissinger became a force in the Council. The New York Timescalled him ‘The Council’s most influential member,’ and a Council insider says that ‘his influence is indirect and enormous –much of it through his Rockefeller connection.”18 The role of Nelson Rockefeller in the life of Henry Kissinger, author of America’s Birth Control and Abortion Agenda, was confirmed by none other than Kissinger himself, when he dedicated his book, White House Years, not to Richard Nixon who had appointed him to his only official governmental positions, but rather, to Nelson Rockefeller “the single most influential person in my life.”19

The Rockefellers were the richest and most prominent supporters of what can only be called a “eugenics” movement (from the Greek words meaning “happy birth”), which has its origin in the theories of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) who was the first to put forward the notion that the size of the population must press against the limits of the food supply because of the “breeding habits” of the “lower classes of society.” Mirroring the views of our contemporary libertarian activists, Malthus – although rejecting government financed birth prevention – believed that by denying the poor all charity, public or private, they would experience fully both the costs and benefits of their reproductive decisions and conform their marriages and childbearing with their earning abilities.20

Even though Charles Darwin admitted to being inspired by Malthus’ studies, it was Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who would inspire the great business magnates of the time, most particularly John D. Rockefeller, Sr. It was Spencer who coined the phrase, “survival of the fittest,” to describe the process of competition by which optimal development occurs in social systems. The benefits derived from the competitive process, i.e., weeding out the unfit, led him to oppose any government interference that might frustrate the process.21

From the historic evidence it is clear that it was the Anglo-American elite who first trumpeted the need for national eugenic policies. In 1912, the First International Congress of Eugenics was held at the University of London. The vice presidents of this conference included Winston Churchill, Charles Eliot (President of Harvard University), David Starr Jordan (President of Stamford University), and other notables. Its goal: “the prevention of the propagation of the unfit.”22 The Third Congress, meeting in 1932, featured a call for the sterilization of 14 million Americans with low intelligence-test scores.23

The United States quickly became the focal point and base for the Population Control Movement, achieving embodiment in Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood) and Hugh Moore (of the Dixie Cup fortune). In the pages of Sanger’s Birth Control Review, all the way back in 1919, was stated in a forthright way the purpose for the Birth Control Movement, “More children from the fit, less from the unfit – that is the chief issue of birth control.” Not really differing from the Social Darwinism of the German National Socialists, Sanger also stated that “funds that should be used to raise the standard of our civilization are diverted to maintenance of those who never should have been born.”24

It was the “conversion” of Hugh Moore, however, to the eugenics camp that initiated the next stage of the birth control movement, the stage where the Rockefellers, John D. Jr., John D. III, Nelson, and David take up –- and pay for –- the banner. In this regard, Hugh Moore was persuaded by a 1948 book written by William Vogt, a former official of Planned Parenthood, that there was a “population bomb” that would “explode” and destroy our civilization. From then on Moore devoted much of his fortune and energies to publicizing “the bomb” and enlisting support for population control measures. It was Moore that allowed Paul Ehrlich to use the title of one of his pamphlets in Ehrlich’s 1968 book The Population Bomb.25

We have spoken of the connection between Richard Nixon and Governor Nelson Rockefeller, the New York governor who signed his state’s abortion legalization bill in 1970. In the same year as the New York legalization, Nixon appointed Nelson’s brother John D. Rockefeller, III, founder of the Population Council, to a Commission on Population Growth and the American Future. John D. Rockefeller, III, long a supporter of the eugenics movement, reported to Congress that since further population growth would not advance such essential national interests as “the vitality of business,” it had better stop.26

Global 2000: Making Religion a Tool of Depopulation Policies

That Henry Kissinger was implementing, with NSSM 200, an established Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) agenda can be clearly seen when, in 1975, concurrent with Kissinger’s progressive implementation of NSSM 200, the CFR’s 1980s Project, produced a volume entitled, Six Billion People: Demographic Dilemmas and World Politics, which echoed The Kissinger Report by calling for the deurbanization of the Third World to curb population growth. It concludes that, in a world of rapidly increasing population, it was not possible to curb population without restricting some elements of freedom.27

In 1976, Kissinger indicated that “restricting some elements of freedom” was not the only grim aspect of the utopian idea of a “healthy” depopulated globe. In a follow-up document to NSSM 200 entitled, “First Annual Report on US International Population Policy (at least the document acknowledges forthrightly that this was indeed US government policy), the document outlines a psychological warfare strategy for overcoming opposition to the population control agenda.

In this report the various religions, political, and cultural “impediments” are mentioned and methods which are “fine-tuned to the particular sensitivities of each of these countries” are advanced.28 One of the first telling recommendations coming from this report was the advice to avoid the very term “birth control.” In this regard we read, “In the case of countries uncommitted to population programs, our efforts must be fine-tuned to their particular sensitivities and attitudes. In the main, we should avoid the language of "birth control" in favor of "family planning" or "responsible parenthood," with the emphasis being placed on child spacing in the interests of the health of child and mother and the well-being of the family and community.”29

Among reasons why there are nations which are refusing the birth control agenda adopted by the U.S. government, the Report identifies “religious influences” and “traditionalism.”30 Another reason given is that “birth control” aid is identified with the United States [seemingly, for good reason], which may produce negative resentment. Moreover, the United States must adopt what can only be called a “feminist” agenda, on account of the fact that, “in many of the uncommitted countries, male machismo, inhibitions about discussing sex issues, and the subservient role of women combine as major obstacles to family planning.”31

Clearly, part of the psychological preparation of the uncooperative segments of the world’s population, was to enlist the assistance of religion in the drive for population control and decreases in the fertility rate. It also began in 1975 with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger establishing a policy-planning group in the US Department of State’s Office of Population Affairs. The group’s main task was to prepare the National Security Council’s “Global 2000 Report to the President.”32 This Report, written finally by the director of the policy group Dr. Gerald Barney, was submitted to then President Jimmy Carter and also made public and sold to over 1.5 million people in 8 languages. Dr. Barney has spoken of the Report as the only public report by any national government on the economic, demographic, resource, and environmental future of the world.33

What interests us, however, is the “updating” done in 1993 by the Millennium Institute led by the same Dr. Barney. This updated analysis of the same global future heading into the year 2000 was entitled, Global 2000 Revisited. The reason Dr. Barney gives for this new update is that, “Global 2000 is now 13 years old, and although most if its trends are still basically disconcertingly accurate, it needs updating. This report assembles new data on most of the basic trends reported in the original Global 2000.”34 The author hoped that the newly inaugurated President Bill Clinton would do a full update.

Global 2000 was being written right before a meeting of the Parliament of the World’s Religions and, therefore, the authors took time to emphasize that they believe that “spiritual leaders have a vital contribution to make to a country’s reflections on sustainable possibilities for the future.”35 In these “reflections” urged by the authors, the “spiritual leaders” should train themselves to consider the dawning of the 21st century as an “anniversary of Earth” [rather, we surmise, than as the bi-millennial anniversary of the Incarnation]. This anniversary must be one in which “all nations, cultures, and faith traditions participate.” The 21st century must be the time to encourage a major shift in human attitudes and institutional goals, a shift towards a “sustainable future.” In order to achieve this, we all need to achieve a new mentality in which we humans “give up old, 20th century ways of thinking and living.”36

At this point in Global 2000 Revisited, we have a repetition of the official Neo-Malthusian overpopulation mantra, “For more than a billion of Earth’s desperately poor humans, the outlook for food and other necessities of life will be no better. Life for billions will be more precarious in the 21st century than it is now – unless the faith traditions of the world lead the nations and peoples of Earth to act decisively to alter current beliefs and policies.”37

Apparently the efforts to psychologically manipulate the uncooperative nations of the world had not been working over the past 20 years, since, “Currently [1993] the world’s population is growing faster than ever before.” However, if “drastic declines in human fertility (or very large increases in mortality) occur over the next five years, it would be possible to stabilize the human population at about 12 billion within a century.” In order for “such a rapid drop in human fertility to occur, it will be necessary to change the religious, social, economic, and legal factors that shape couple’s decisions on the number of children they have….but most importantly, religious teachings…must shift to encourage small families.”38 If overpopulation does not recede, the carbon dioxide concentrations will cause “planet-wide changes in temperatures and weather patterns. Such changes would seriously disrupt agriculture throughout the world as early as the first half of the 21st century.39

So what did Global 2000 Revisited say to the religious leaders in 1993, after some 90 years of population control propaganda and militancy? Rather than, rather awkwardly, give them specific instructions, it instead asks a series of leading questions. “What does your faith tradition teach about the human destiny? Is the human destiny separable from that of Earth? What does your tradition teach concerning the destiny of followers of other traditions? How does your faith tradition characterize the teachings and followers of other faiths? Do some adherent of your tradition hold that the teachings and followers of other faiths are evil, dangerous, or even misguided? Is there any possibility that your faith tradition can derive wisdom, truth, or insight from the teachings of another faith? What are the traditional teachings – and the range of other opinions – within your faith on the possibility of criticism, correction, reinterpretation, and even rejection of ancient traditional assumptions and ‘truth’ in light of new understandings or revelations? Does your faith tradition envision new revelation, new understanding, new interpretation, new wisdom, and new faith concerning human activity affecting the future of the Earth?”40

These questions indicate that orthodox Christianity cannot be allowed to survive if the globe is to be saved from demographic and environmental disaster –finally we get to the core of the Birth Control Agenda. But, have we not just heard a perfect articulation of the New Religion of our time? In this attempt to hijack the ancient Christian Faith, they, definitely, think they have won.

The 1993 Global 2000 Revisited population control document
called for avoiding the language of "birth control" in favor of
"family planning" or "responsible parenthood," two slogans
adopted by post-Conciliar churchmen.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

"The [prayer] I like most...the 'General Prayer' by Peter Canisius from the sixteenth century. It remains unchangingly pertinent and beautiful." Last Testament, New York: Bloomsbury, 2016, 8.

Almighty and eternal God, Lord Heavenly Father! Look through the eyes of your gratuitous mercy at our sorrow, misery, and need. Have mercy on all the faithful Christians, for whom your only-begotten Son, our beloved Lord and saviour, Jesus Christ, willingly went into the hands of sinners and shed his precious blood on the trunk of the cross. Through this Lord Jesus avert, gracious Father, the well-deserved punishment, present and future threats, shameful rebellions, war famine, disease, sad, and miserable times. Also enlighten and strengthen all worldly and spiritual rulers and leaders in all goods, so they convey what is to your divine honour, to our salvation, to general peace, and the welfare of all Christianity. Grant us, O God of peace, a just unity of faith, without any division and separation; convert our hearts to true repentance and amendment of our lives; kindle in us the fire of your love, give us hunger and zeal for every form of righteousness, so that we be as pleasing and agreeable to you as obedient children in life and in death. We pray also, as you will it, O God, that we should pray, for our friends and enemies, the healthy and the sick, for all sad and sorrowful Christians, for all the living and the dead. To you O Lord, may we commend all our work and leisure, our trade and commerce, our living and dying. Let us enjoy thy grace here and get there with all the elect that we might praise you in eternal joy and blessedness, honour and praise! Grant us that, O Lord, heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ your beloved Son, who lives with you and the Holy Spirit as the same God and rules from eternity to eternity, Amen!Ibid., 247 nii (with corrections of Plinthos, based on the text below).

Sunday, November 13, 2016

"The modern concept of democracy seems to be inseparably united to relativism, which presents itself as the true guarantor of freedom." Joseph Ratzinger, Verdad, valores, poder, Madrid: Rialp, 2012, 84.

"Moral nihilism is the basis of democracy...It needs men without convictions, agile creatures, light, freed from the trouble of value, without moral scruples which keep them from jumping from one constellation of meaning to another. Mann ohne Eigenschaften, a being without qualities: behold the model democratic man." Ibid., 11. (This latter quote is from the introduction, by José Luis del Barco).

Previous statutes were issued in 2004 and enumerate the “specific tasks” (§2) of the Academy in three points: to “study questions and issues connected with the promotion and defense of human life from an interdisciplinary perspective,” to “educate in a culture of life,” and to “inform the Church and the public […] about the most relevant results of its study and research activities.”

In the new statutes, §3 has received an addition: whereas the paragraph previously stated that research of a scientific character must “be directed towards the promotion and defense of human life,” the new paragraph reads:

“The Academy has a task of a prevalently scientific nature, directed towards the promotion and defense of human life (cf. Vitae Mysterium, 4). In particular, it studies the various aspects that relate to the care of the dignity of the human person at the different ages of existence, mutual respect between genders and generations, the defense of the dignity of each single human being, the promotion of a quality of human life that integrates material and spiritual value, with a view to an authentic ‘human ecology’, which may help to recover the original balance of Creation between the human person and the entire universe (cf. Chirograph, 15 August 2016).”

The surprise is the inclusion of the word “gender” instead of the more specific and less loaded word “sex,” as well as the consideration of the quality of a human life in a dependent relation with the “entire universe.” This leaves the door open to all kinds of modern trends, such as elevating animal life to equal standing with human life, or putting the idea of a sociological gender before the natural sex of a person. At the same time, the ambiguous “original balance of Creation” is introduced, which needs further theological exposition in order not to be mistaken for a pagan idea of the cosmos.

Another drastic change for the PAV is the removal of the requirement for members to sign a “Declaration of the Servants of Life,” an avowal geared to members who are physicians and medical researchers, which makes explicit the members’ willingness to follow Church teaching on the sacredness of human life and an obligation to not perform “destructive research on the embryo or fetus, elective abortion, or euthanasia.”

The removal of such a statement can hardly be seen as removing something superfluous. The very founding of the PAV aimed to counteract cultural trends of the “culture of death,” as St. Pope John Paul II has called secularized modern culture.

Historically the PAV has been known for its membership of mainly orthodox Catholics who defend the Church’s pro-life teachings, but other pontifical academies have been criticized in the past for welcoming members that oppose Church teaching.

However, the PAV leadership itself has come under fire in recent years. In 2009, then-president Archbishop Rino Fisichella published an article in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper, opposing a Brazilian archbishop who had excommunicated doctors for committing an abortion on a 9-year-old girl pregnant with twins. The article sparked a revolt by over half of Academy members.

In 2012, the Academy leadership faced criticism from its members over an infertility conference in which they hosted speakers who suggested artificial reproductive procedures like IVF are “natural” and acceptable.

A further change in the new statutes – plausibly the most significant one – is that members will no longer be appointed for life. They will be nominated for renewable five-year terms that end when the member turns 80.

The new statutes, which were in preparation for several years, are supposed to “allow the Academy to respond more effectively to the many challenges that the Ethics of Life present to believers and to all men and women who ask themselves what it means to live a truly human life,” as its website states.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the recently appointed president of the PAV, explained that the new statutes will help coordinate the work of the Academy in connection to other curial bodies, but extend beyond that. He added that the PAV will henceforth also collaborate with “ … other academic institutions, including those that reflect belief systems and cultures different from ours, that are active like us in this very sensitive and developing field of study.”

Monsignor Renzo Pegoraro, chancellor of the PAV, added that the Academy will continue its work. “At the same time, however, this development in the Academy’s life is meant to answer the need for a broadened approach to the pressing and complex questions facing life itself today — an approach ensuring that life is always cared for, protected and respected.”

John Podesta, left, with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in 2014, when Podesta advised the White House (2014)

John Podesta said: 'We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good' to help change the Church.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief helped to create campaign groups to press for a “revolution” in the Catholic Church, according to leaked emails.

John Podesta, head of Clinton’s campaign, says he helped to found two Catholic organisations to press for change in the Church.

In emails from 2012+ released by Wikileaks and alleged to be by Podesta, he responds to an email from Barack Obama’s friend and former boss, Sandy Newman, about an “opening for a Catholic Spring”.

Newman suggests that “Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church.” Newman refers to this as planting the “seeds of a revolution”.

Podesta replies: “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up.”

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) was founded by Tom Periello in 2005. Its chairman is Fred Rotondaro. Both Rotondaro and Periello are senior fellows at the Centre for American Progress, founded by Podesta.

Rotondaro has called for the ordination of women, saying: “I have never seen any rational reason why a woman could not be a priest.” In the same article he says that “Gay sex comes from God”, and asks whether “any practicing Catholic under age 80” agrees with the Church’s teaching on contraception.

Critics have described CACG as a “Trojan Horse” for those who would undermine Church teaching. But its connections to senior figures in the Democrat party, and its intent to change the Church, have not previously been so clear.

Catholics United was also founded in 2005, by Democrat activists Chris Korzen and James Salt.

Catholics United has condemned bishops who deny Communion to politicians who support legal abortion. It describes this as “a shameful attempt to use the Catholic sacrament of Communion as a political weapon”.

Catholic writer Thomas Peters tweeted that the revelations showed CACG and other organisations were engaged in “deception” and that it showed Podesta himself had “a very active role”.

3/ CACG never used phrases like “Middle Ages dictatorship” to describe Catholic teaching … in public, that is. Deception was and is key.

The revelations are the second significant reference to Catholics which Wikileaks has released so far. Elsewhere, Jennifer Palmieri, now Clinton’s director of communications, and John Halpin, a co-author of Podesta’s and a former Democrat strategist, criticise Catholics who are involved in politics.

In the 2011 emails, Halpin writes: “Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic (many converts) from the SC [possibly a reference to the Republican Study Committee] and think tanks to the media and social groups.”

Halpin says the Catholics’ involvement in the American conservative movement means they must have misinterpreted Catholicism’s political tradition. It is, he says, “an amazing bastardization of the faith”.

He goes on to speculate: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.”

Palmieri replies: “I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn’t understand if they became evangelicals.”

Halpin says this is an “Excellent point”, and goes on: “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what the hell they’re talking about.”

The exchange was prompted by a New Yorker piece on Rupert Murdoch which observed that both Murdoch and Robert Thomson, then managing editor of the Wall Street Journal, are Catholic.

Re: opening for a Catholic Spring? just musing . . .

We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a
moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now.
Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this
one will have to be bottom up. I'll discuss with Tara. Kathleen
Kennedy Townsend is the other person to consult.
On 2/10/12, Sandy Newman wrote:
> Hi, John,
>
> This whole controversy with the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage even
> though 98% of Catholic women (and their conjugal partners) have used
> contraception has me thinking . . . There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in
> which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and
> the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the
> Catholic church. Is contraceptive coverage an issue around which that could
> happen. The Bishops will undoubtedly continue the fight. Does the Catholic
> Hospital Association support of the Administration's new policy, together
> with "the 98%" create an opportunity?
>
> Of course, this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the
> Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and
> priests who count on it for their maintenance, etc. Even if the idea isn't
> crazy, I don't qualify to be involved and I have not thought at all about
> how one would "plant the seeds of the revolution," or who would plant them.
> Just wondering . . .
>
> Hoping you're well, and getting to focus your time in the ways you want.
>
> Sandy
>
> Sandy Newman, President
> Voices for Progress
> 202.669.8754
> voicesforprogress.org

P.S. In light of this it should be no wonder that Obama should be so friendly with the communists (e.g. the Castro's). Now the question is where the Jesuit Pontiff fits in all of this, with his misplaced "mercy" toward the communists.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

And so this is how the Obama era of Hope & Change really ends. With the world turned upside down, and with President Obama having to pass the baton to Donald Trump.

That is going to be one helluva inauguration.

Trump stands today as the greatest disrupter in modern politics, the winner of the biggest upset imaginable, but for most of the campaign, he was not even the best argument for his own candidacy. That distinction belonged to the millions upon millions of everyday Americans who found in him the bare-knuckled brawler they were desperately seeking.

Their choice started as a surprise, as Republican primary voters turned their backs on a parade of supposedly better-qualified candidates to make the TV celebrity with the funny hair their battering ram against an arrogant establishment.

Their movement grew and spread until, early Wednesday, as the key states swung red one after another on TV maps, the last walls of resistance came tumbling down. It was a hallelujah moment, the ultimate underdog leading the forgotten masses to triumph. All the more so because Trump’s voters often took great risks and were routinely insulted and demeaned for their passion.

But they wore those insults as badges of honor, proudly calling themselves the “deplorables” and the “irredeemables.”

They would not be deterred, and today they have taken back their country.

Trump’s remarkable victory is their victory. It is a victory for democracy, for the common men and women of America.

The factory workers, the veterans, the cops, the kitchen help, people who plow the fields, make the trains run, pick up the trash and keep the country together and keep it moving — they are all now winners. As one, these cogs of our daily life rose up in a peaceful revolution, their only weapons the ballot box and their faith in the future.

This, the greatest nation ever conceived on Earth, proved once again that America is exceptional because Americans are exceptional.

Trump voters had the courage of their conviction to go against all their betters, all the poobahs and petty potentates of politics, industry and, above all, the fraudulent hucksters of the national liberal media.

And who, at this extraordinary juncture, dares say that Trump is not worthy of victory and of the salute of his countrymen? He has done what nobody thought he could, overcoming the doubts and scoffs every incredible step of the way.

No candidate in modern times and perhaps ever has suffered such abuse at the hands of the dominant culture. Virtually every day, nearly all the front pages and broadcasters in the entire country vilified him in an attempt to destroy him.

The late-night comics made fun of him like so much trailer trash, Wall Street saw him as a threat, Hollywood looked down on him and even the pope added his two cents of disdain.

It was dirty pool, against any standard of fairness and decency, but that was not the would-be assassins’ biggest mistake. It was that failing to destroy Trump, the elite smart set unleashed its contempt on his supporters.

The effect was the opposite of what was intended. Instead of demoralizing the Trumpsters, the nonstop attacks hardened them and made them more determined to finish what they had started.

Now America, at last, has a countervailing cultural force. Not so much a conservative standing against a liberal establishment, but rather a fearless populist who likes to mix it up and insists on doing things his way.

Sure, he’s thin-skinned and can be a bully, and there were many times when he looked like he was throwing his chances away with foolish fights. But for the last month, he has been a model of restraint and stuck resolutely to the issues, showing that he wanted to win more than he wanted to pop off or chase rabbits down holes.

Of course, new and greater challenges await, and the task of governing such a large, complex nation will present a sharp learning curve. But the first step in governing is winning the people’s consent, and there is no denying that Trump represents the mood for change every bit as much as Obama did eight years ago.

I said some time ago that the pendulum sometimes swings farther than we think it will, and that’s what we’re witnessing. Obama begat Trump.

A month ago, it looked as if Obama would pick his successor and bury Trump in a humiliating landslide. Yet today, Trump is the president-elect and the Obama legacy is in shambles.

As for Hillary Clinton, she didn’t deserve to be president, despite wanting it more than life itself.

She had no rationale for running, was so ethically challenged and so patently dishonest that, to me, it would be a give-up if she became president.

She would have made history and ruined the country. That was too high a price for shattering the glass ceiling.

Beyond Clinton, Obama and George Soros, Hollywood and the media, the losers include political correctness, that disease of the spirit that saps confidence in one’s own values and success.

Most important, Trump pledged to make America strong again, and if he does, he will be a success.